Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to review the approval thresholds for new medications used by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

There are no plans to review the standard cost-effectiveness range that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) uses in the evaluation of new medicines. NICE is responsible for the methods and processes it uses for health technology assessment, and concluded a comprehensive review of its methods and processes for the evaluation of new medicines in January 2022. As a result of the review, NICE introduced a new severity modifier that enables NICE to apply a weighting to medicines licensed for the treatment of more severe diseases. NICE is able to recommend the majority of medicines it appraises for use on the National Health Service, often as a result of confidential commercial agreements struck between the NHS and companies.